1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a camera with a rangefinder device, a photometer device, a viewfinder device, a display device with a rotary pointer, and a mounting board with control circuits incorporated into a compact camera body.
2. Description of the Related Art
For compact cameras, it is desirable to make the camera body small and compact for ease of carrying and handling. To accomplish this, the layout of the various components incorporated within the camera body must be compact and efficient. However, this is difficult to achieve because the camera body contains a photographic lens barrel, a spool compartment with a film windup spool, and a cartridge component into which a film cartridge is loaded and which camera body also contains other constituent camera components such as a photometer device, a rangefinder device, a viewfinder device, a display device, and others. The location of the constituent camera components within the camera body, such as a spool component and a cartridge component, a photographic lens barrel located in-between these, and a viewfinder device, etc., is limited to some degree. Furthermore, other constituent camera components such as a photometer device, a rangefinder device, or a mounting board for camera control circuits, have been incorporated into vacant space above or below the spool compartment, photographic lens barrel, and cartridge component, or incorporated into vacant space in the grip portion of the camera.
Display devices for cameras in the related art, such as one proposed in Japanese Patent Application 3-214613, indicate an index on a pointer scale by a rotatable pointer. This display device is fixed on the top of a camera body and is driven by a stepping motor. Although this display device is easy to see, because the stepping motor and the drive mechanism are mounted beneath the display scale, this display device is thicker than a liquid crystal display device and inhibits the reduction of the camera size.
To provide a smaller size camera in the related art, a flexible printed circuit board ("FPC") has usually been used as a mounting board to mount various electrical components, and has been incorporated into the camera body by using a space of the front surface or the upper side of the camera body. However, the flexible printed circuit boards are more expensive than rigid boards and have limitations on the mounting of control circuit components. Therefore, in the related art, one rigid board or a rigid board connected by divided flexible printed circuit boards, has been located in a suitable place within the camera body, such as in the upper side of the camera body.
Locating the rigid board in the upper side of the camera body, however, inhibits reducing and compacting the camera size. This is due to the large height of the rangefinder device, photometer device, and/or viewfinder device, and when these components are located between the rigid board and the photographic lens barrel, a space results between the rigid board and the upper end of the cartridge compartment.
In particular, depending on the loading direction of the film into the camera body, the loading type of the cartridge compartment is defined as either a sequential loading type or a reverse loading type. In the sequential loading type, the cartridge is loaded into the camera body in a direction with the convex portion on the cartridge end facing downwards. In this case, however, it is necessary to arrange the driving fork, and its drive mechanism unit used to drive the rotation of the film cartridge shaft, on the upper side of the camera body. Due to the locating space required for this, the mounting of the rigid board, having a large board surface, on the upper side of the camera body is inhibited. This leads to problems in designing a smaller and more compact camera.
The particular problem is that the mounting area of the rigid board needs to be a large as possible to provide a large degree of freedom for mounting components and for surfaces on which circuits are built. However, when the sequential loading type of cartridge compartment is used, the size of the board cannot be maintained.
On the other hand, in the reverse loading type of cartridge compartment, because the aforementioned fork and its drive mechanism unit can be located in the lower direction in the camera body, the size of the rigid board can be maintained. However, because of the arrangement of the rangefinder device and the photometer device on the rigid board, it is necessary for a space to be opened up between the rigid board and the cartridge compartment. Therefore, the size of the camera cannot be made smaller and more compact.
Moreover, when an Albada type of viewfinder device is used, because of its large size, the size of the rigid board remains large. Due to mounting of the viewfinder device on the rigid board, the height dimension of the camera must remain large.
In particular, the body of a compact camera must be as small as possible to make it more portable and more easily handled by making it more compact. To make the camera body more compact, the various components of the camera should be densely and efficiently incorporated within the camera body itself.
On the other hand, various kinds of electrical devices such as an automatic exposure mechanism, an autofocus mechanism, and a strobe have been incorporated into the camera body. To make the size of the mounting board as large as possible, and to design the camera to be smaller and more compact, the mounting board must be carefully located and the various components on this board must be efficiently located, thus leading to a reduction in cost.